Men In Black 3

It’s time for another edition of “Good Idea, Bad Idea.” Bad Idea: making a movie based on a board game (*cough*Battleship*cough*). Good Idea? Remaking a movie based on a book about a fake board game. Just ask Columbia Pictures President Doug Belgrad.

While talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Belgrad talked about some of the projects on the books at his studio, including a potential remake of its 1995 adventure hit Jumanji. The original film starred Robin Williams as a guy who grew up trapped inside the titular jungle adventure game, and co-starred Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce as the kids who free him and release all manner or creature and animal on their small New England town.

“We’re going to try and reimagine Jumanji and update it for the present,” said Belgrad. The original Jumanji was directed by Captain America filmmaker Joe Johnston.

In other franchise news, Belgrad says he’s pleased with the $615.5 million worldwide haul of Men in Black 3 and is now looking at what might come next for the MiBs. “We’re very pleased with the financial performance of Men in Black 3, and we believe it is an ongoing franchise. We’re going to do [another one], but we don’t have clarity yet on how it should be done.“

And speaking of buddy cop movies, look for more 21 Jump Street in the not too distant future. “Yes, we plan to start shooting in the fall,” Belgrad explained. “There are very few actors — I’m going to quote Amy — who can do romance, action and comedy. We’re in business with two of them, Channing Tatum and Will Smith.”

So in other words, get ready for more sequels and reboots coming soon to a theater near you. Whether you like it or not.

Last week Dan Aykroyd, the last man on Earth convinced that a third Ghostbusters is in the not too distant future, announced that a new writing team had been hired to try and bring Ghostbusters III just that little bit closer to principal photography. Well according to Variety, that team is really just one man: Etan Cohen.

Now Cohen’s an interesting choice. He penned Tropic Thunder, but more importantly he was one of the writers (or at least one of the credited writers) on Men In Black 3, another threequel that a lot of people, myself included, thought would never happen. Cohen now takes over scripting chores from Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (The Office), who were hired on the project in September 2008.

In its article, Variety adds that the film “is expected to find original castmembers Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and Bill Murray passing the torch to a new generation of Ghostbusters,” which says absolutely nothing as to what the film will actually be about. If anybody knows what that is, of course.

Though Will Smith is presently headlining the third movie in the Men in Black series, a film that recently passed the $500 million worldwide box office threshold, he apparently is losing his taste for sequels, telling BBC News:

“I don’t want to be the sequel guy. I figure I’ve got about six or seven more years where I can run and jump a little bit and then I’m going butt and gut for the rest of my career. Butt and gut.”

Smith then immediately added a “Wooooooooo!!!”, because he sounds exactly like Jay Pharoah.

In keeping with his new-found sequel bias, the Bad Boys 2 star, who has previously been loosely linked to sequels forIndependence Day and Hancock, also told the BBC the cold hard truth about the proposed I Am Legend sequel… eventually.

“Producers are working on it,” Smith said, adding, “I’m not actually working on it. If it’s great, I’m into it.”, before finally admitting that he probably wouldn’t reconsider and, I suppose, actually work on it.

Spoilers. You’ve been warned.

Fans and other general viewers of the 2007 Francis Lawrence helmed sci-fi/horror epic will no doubt recall that Smith’s Robert Neville character died at the end. Those who also read the Richard Matheson novel (also titled, I Am Legend) that the film was based on, will no doubt recall that the film veered wildly from the source material, not in Neville’s end, but in the way the story concludes.

Smith‘s “death” in the film prompted many to speculate that his involvement in a future Legend project would indicate a need for any future film to be a prequel, despite the numerous flashbacks that detailed both Neville’s back story and the way that the virus spread — but now I have to wonder if we could be in a for a sequel.

In the novel, Neville begins to more fully witness the humanity of the vampirish creatures and realizes that he is now the “new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever”, the new “legend” prior to his death. Producers could visit that revelation with a new protagonist pivoting off of the original film.

Lets be honest though, the alternate ending to the movie starts down this path, and it’s actually a vast improvement on the Hollywood-sacrificial-hero-porn that went out to the masses at first in the theatrical cut. So any hope that a truer, more bleak ending might be fleshed out is likely just rabid hope, spun off into a void, never to be seen again. But then again, these people are allegedly working on another I Am Legend film sans the warm light of Will Smith‘s presence, so perhaps they’re a gaggle of dreamers and fools hell bent on chasing rainbows… or something.

It took mere seconds for the nervous sweats to set in. The stale stench of popcorn mixed with the aroma of shattered hopes, and what I hope is not stale urine. Like walking into the middle of someone elses break up, I instantly knew I shouldn’t be there; there was no way this was going to end well. Why had I thought this was a good idea?! Why had anyone thought this would be a good idea?

Will Smith hasn’t released a film in 3 years, leaving the Earth unprotected for three consecutive summers. His presence in summer blockbusters has been a comfortingly reliable standby, like knowing your grandmother will give you socks for Christmas: not the coolest thing ever, but it gets the job done. Upon hearing the news of Smith’s return to alien slaughtering in Men in Black 3, I became giddy with excitement. There was no logic in this sudden burst of excitement. It was purely guttural, rising from a place of clandestine immaturity and under-developed nerdery. I did not realize it at the time, but I’d been conditioned, from a young age, to associate Will Smith with unbridled fun. Undoing this conditioning, as it turns out, requires one viewing of MiB3 followed by 2 glasses of wine, 3 episodes of Community, and a good, long cry (actual duration of crying may vary from person to person).

I might be late to the game on this, but something is troubling me. Men In Black 3 is coming out this weekend, right? Will Smith is staring in the movie, right? Why have I not heard his song to go with it yet? Yes, I know he hasn’t rapped in any of his movies in a decade (the last being from the last MIB movie, “Black Suits Comin’ (Nod Ya Head).” Yes, I know his more recent movies don’t lend well to a jaunty funky rap song (but damn it, he could have tried.) And yes, I know I have cracked a string of cynical/sarcastic jokes about him getting songs shoe horned into soundtracks, but I really thought we were due here.

I wanted him to.

After an exhaustive 38 second internet search I have found out that Pitbull is doing the theme to MIB3, and that I am not alone in wishing this wasn’t so. The fine funny folk from Sneaky Zebra have created a PSA on the topic, calling for Will Smith to rap once more. He must, damn it. This was promised to be the Willenium after all.

I’m banking on a lackluster result quality wise, but a lot of people seem excited to go back in time with the next installment of the Men in Black franchise… perhaps to a time when the Men in Black franchise was worth getting excited about. Still, I offer proper respect to the first film and the look of the second film, and a lot of that credit goes to Barry Sonnenfeld, who is apparently in talks with Warner Brothers to do a comic book movie, this according to, well, him, by way of ComicBookMovie.com.

“You know, I’m talking to Warner Bros. about doing a franchise based on a comic that hasn’t been around since the 60s. But it’s too early to talk about it. But possibly, yes.”

You hear that? Warners is making a Herbie Popnecker movie! Or maybe, maybe Brain Boy: The Cinema Film! Or Mercury Man! One of them, all of them, none of them, it could be a public domain character, not an old DC character, so the choices (when you follow the parameters Sonnenfeld laid out) are endless and awful. Come on Warners, can this and give us a Flash or a Wonder Woman movie!

…And Josh Brolin is all Tommy Lee Jonesy. Don’t get me wrong, Men in Black 3 does look like it’ll be a fun movie (even with the South Park finger-cuff mobiles). It has wacky aliens and shiny guns and a very MIB plot:

Veteran MIB field agent Agent J learns that Agent K’s life and the fate of Earth are at stake. He must time-travel to 1969 to stop an alien criminal named Boris from assassinating K and changing the course of history of the planet, travelling back from the future to 1969 to team up with the young version of Agent K (Josh Brolin) to stop the alien criminal, while apparently also facing a twenty four hour time limit before he will be trapped in the past forever.

What more could you ask for? Besides for the absence of a Will Smith song on the soundtrack, you know he’s gonna.

This NerdBastard is having a hard time getting any kind of excitement going for the next installment of Columbia Pictures MIB III. Maybe someone can help me out in the comments section below and let me know why I should give a crap about this movie.

The first one was great, totally unexpected, fresh and fun. The second one . . . not so much. I’m pretty much over the whole:

“Oh My!!! Look who’s really an alien!!!!”

Really, does anyone give a greasy monkey shit that Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber are gonna make their alien debuts?

(Quick side note – For some reason it pissed me the hell off that the spell check in WordPress actually had the correct spelling for Justin Beiber’s last name in there. Screw that, if I spelled his name wrong then leave that shit alone.)

The movie opens May 25th, so you’ve got 23 days to change my mind or join me in the other theater for a second, third, or fourth veiwing of The Avengers.

After the shitload of disorganized chaos associated with the film during its production, Men in Black 3 will be out in theaters in about a month. Basically, producers had come up with the idea of a third film back when the second film was still in production but nothing had been done about it for quite some time. When filming finally started last year, the script wasn’t finished and so an extended break was scheduled for the cast and crew in order to figure out how that shit was going to end. Sounds like they really have their shit together, eh? Of course, a lot of fans and critics are skeptical about the quality of this upcoming film for that reason, and Sony has been spending a lot of time trying to rectify the PR disaster that this caused by promising that the stars will be bringing their characters to life the way that we remember and love them.

Director Barry Sonnenfeld spoke with MTV about the upcoming film and discussed some of the difficulties that were posed. One of which being that this movie will complete the trilogy but will also be used to lead into a reboot franchise, and so the appropriate clues must be included into the film. My first thought is: what the fuck do we need more reboots for?

Anyway, here are some tidbits from the interview. This is what Sonnenfeld had to say about the future direction of the series:

The fantastic thing about “Men in Black 3″ is that it totally closes out the trilogy, it answers questions that you didn’t even know you should be asking, it leaves you emotionally warm and sad and happy, and it could also reboot the franchise. But I can’t even begin to tell you how to interpret all of that. [Laughs] But I would say this: If your interpretation is that “Men in Black 4″ will only star the worm guys and Frank the pug, you are wrong.

He also talked a bit about the villain in this film, who will be played by Jemaine Clement, and may be reminiscent of Vincent D’Onofrio’s bug from Men in Black 1.

Jemaine delivers a totally villainous performance. If there’s any comedy at all, it’s just through frustration. [Laughs] The great thing about Earth is that it can be a frustrating place for aliens. We don’t think clearly, we’re not logical all the time. But Jemaine is not on board this movie for comic relief. His performance is really strong and really villainous. Think about it: If you had not seen the first “Men in Black,” and people had told you that Tommy lee Jones was funny, you wouldn’t have believed it. This is the same thing — no one is trying to be funny. I want my actors to be real. If it’s a funny situation, I want it to be funny. But I don’t want anyone to play to the comedy. Let the audience find the comedy; I don’t want to tell any [of the cast or crew] where it is. So, Jemaine does not deliver a comedic performance. While there are moments of humor that the audience will find funny, Jemaine himself is not being funny, if you get that.

Editors note: I got a little ranty with this post. Feel free to skip my “oh those were the days” grumblings and jump straight to images of Prometheus, G.I. Joe, Riddick, The Hobbit and more!

Back in the 80’s and early 90’s, I remember when movie studios would release trading card sets featuring an early look at their films. Short of a movie trailer, these assorted packs of still frames from anticipated movies were the only thing to wet the appetite of eager movie viewers. Plus, the lone stick of gum in each pack offered sugary nourishment (Yummo).Oh those were days, but now with the rise of the Internet the collectible value of these cards have been ruined. Movie images are now plastered all over the internet. Instant and constant gratification. My precious cards have been reduced to mere bicycle noise makers. Curses! But, the internet gives me a job, porn and easy ways to order cupcakes. So, I really can’t complain.

There’s a bunch of movies coming out this summer. You know this. While we count down the days to each respective release, studios our teasing us with image after image. Today we’ve got a whole bunch to ogle over. We’ve gathered images from this summer’s action sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Ridley Scott’s Alien-verse flick Prometheus, Peter Jackson’s LOTR precursorThe Hobbit, along with a few alien creatures for Will Smith’s Men In Black 3.

WARNING: Instead of putting all these images into a easy to navigate gallery (which actually isn’t easy to categorize), we dumped them all in-line, one after another. So, be prepared for lots of scrolling.

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